April is the cruellest month. The epigraph to TS Eliot’s The Waste Land:
nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent ‘Σίβυλλα, τί θέλεις;’ respondebat illa ‘ἀποθανεῖν θέλω’.
For with my own eyes I myself saw the Sibyl at Cumae, hanging in a flask. When the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what is your wish?’ she answered, ‘I wish to die.’
Trimalchio is speaking, and recounts this story for less than obvious reasons, discussed here.
Filed under: Petronius
